Thursday, November 18, 2010
Parent-Teacher Conferences
As I'm sitting here at my Parent-Teacher Conferences (0 students so far, 5 all of last year), I wonder why there is such a discrepancy in the attendance. Elementary and to some extent middle school conferences are all very well attended. It doesn't seem that way at the high school level. I just received the statistics in my board packet regarding Beaverton's attendance. At the primary level (K-3), 90% of parents attended, and that was followed up by 88% at the middle school level (4-8). However, at the high school level, only 44% came. I checked with the administrators at Dow High, and they reported similar figures. Why do the parents stop coming at the high school level? For some students, graduation is in question and need their parents more than ever to lean on them and put pressure on them to buckle down. Anyone have any thoughts?
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I am not quite sure but it sure does seem to be the trend. I teach middle school, 8th grade, and I too see this a lot. Our 6th grade teachers in our building see twice as many parents as I ever see and then it gets to be fewer in high school as you mentioned. One reason I believe that elementary receives more parents is that they have set times and contact the parents themselves to set up the meeting. Where in the MS or HS the conferences are just set up for some many hours on one day, parents are not set to a time like the elementary so they show up if they can but don't feel obligated like a time commitment would be. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteDo you think it has something to do with the fact that sometimes the parents don't really know the curriculum and they are embarassed to admit it? I've seen it time and time where parents don't want to talk to a teacher because they are afraid they won't say the right thing. Not sure, just a thought
ReplyDeleteI also feel that some parents just simply go through the motion. Unfortunately, their child's education is one of them. Somewhere along the line maybe they became detached from the school system and what their child is learning and doing in school.
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